County executives await environmental report

Jul. 6, 2012

The Tappan Zee Bridge / Seth Harrison/The Journal News, File

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A crucial vote on the new Tappan Zee Bridge has been postponed at the request of local leaders, but it’s not expected to delay the $5 billion project.

The county executives of Rockland, Westchester and Putnam want more details about the state’s plan to build a new bridge before agreeing to include the project in the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council’s long-term regional transportation plan.

The vote was scheduled for Tuesday, but the meeting was postponed. No new date has been set.

Federal officials can’t give final approval on the project until the vote is taken.

The federal decision is expected in September, with the state awarding the contract to the consortium that will design and build the twin-span bridge shortly after.

Rockland County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef, Westchester County Executive Robert Astorino and Putnam County Executive Mary Ellen Odell asked that the vote be put off so they can review the state’s final environmental impact statement, which is expected to be released at the end of this month and contain a trove of details in its responses to some 3,000 public comments.

Thomas Madison, executive director of the New York State Thruway Authority, which owns the Tappan Zee Bridge and is building its replacement, said Thursday in a statement that the council’s decision “to wait for a full review of the final environmental impact statement before voting on the new Tappan Zee bridge will give us time to make sure community stakeholders are fully informed and will in no way delay the project.”

The county executives are seeking details about the project’s financing, tolls, environmental impacts and transit alternatives among other topics.

Vanderhoef said in a statement the final envionmental report would provide “essential information.”

Astorino called the decision to postpone “common sense” since the environmental document is due within weeks.

“Why would we have a vote before seeing what’s in it?” Astorino said in a statement. “I have said from the beginning, we need to build the bridge, but we need to do it right. Getting as much information upfront will pay big dividends in terms of building a bridge that’s affordable and meets the present and future needs of Westchester, the region, our state and our nation.”

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Odell said the three county executives were not looking to hold up the project, and fully anticipated they would vote it shortly after the statement was reviewed.

“I have not gotten the impression from anyone at any time that (they) don’t recognize that this project has to happen,” Odell told The Journal News.

Jeffrey Zupan, a senior transportation fellow at the Regional Plan Association, said the leaders weren’t making a political statement by holding up the vote, but using it to leverage more clarity about the mega-project being built in their backyard.

“If you weren’t asking for the information, you’re not doing your job,” said Zupan, who lives in Chestnut Ridge.

“The county executives have to be thinking about their constituents and what their constituents will have to pay for the bridge and pay every time they want to cross it,” he added.

The vote must be unanimous among the council’s nine principal voting members. They are the five county executives of Rockland, Westchester, Putnam, Nassau and Suffolk; the Metropolitan Transportation Authority; the New York City Department of Planning; the New York City Department of Transportation; and New York state Department of Transportation.

Zupan said the delaying the vote would become a “big deal” if it stretched into months.

“But I suspect it won’t be that long,” he said.

The vote has now been delayed twice. It was originally scheduled for June 21 but was pushed back for another reason.

Transportation council spokeswoman Lisa Daglian said it was not “unprecedented” for council members to get a vote postponed.